Brianna Moore, 17, of Oak Park, looking in bushes at Elizabeth Park in Trenton for cigarette butts and other trash Saturday July 13, 2013. / MADALYN RUGGIERO/Special to the Free Press

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Detroit Free Press Staff Writer

Sitting next to her dad in Trenton’s Elizabeth Park, Brianna Moore grasped a fishing pole and waited for a tug.

Moore, 17, loves to fish. But on that day a few years ago, something else in the Detroit River grabbed her attention.

There, dancing on the water as it lapped against the shore, were soggy, stinky cigarette butts.

“I thought it was very nasty of people to throw them in the water because it’s very harmful for the fish,” Moore said. She picked them up.

The Oak Park teen with a bright smile has been working ever since to make her community cleaner.

Action for Nature, a San Francisco-based nonprofit, has recognized her efforts with an International Young Eco-Hero Award.

“She’s doing so many things in the community that really need to be done and influencing others to change their habits and follow her leadership,” said Beryl Kay, president of Action for Nature. “It’s a really great example of how we all should be living and what we should be doing.”

In 2010, Moore started the Green Lifesaver Recycling Foundation to promote recycling. She visits Belle Isle or Elizabeth Park once a week with her parents, wearing gloves as she collects cigarette butts, bottles and other trash from the ground and water.

“I get very upset,” she said. “There is no excuse not to walk to a recycling bin or trash can where you can throw them away.”

Moore hauls the litter to a local recycling center and stuffs the cigarette butts, which the center doesn’t accept, into plastic bags. She then mails the butts to TerraCycle, a company that has them recycled into plastic pallets and other industrial products.

Smokers who know about the effort even stop by her house to drop off the contents of their ashtrays.

Moore said she’s particularly concerned about cigarette butts because they’re not biodegradable. She has collected thousands.

“I want my kids to be able to see the nice little green Earth that I live in now, and my kids’ kids,” she said. “If more people got out and recycled, the environment could be clean.”

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Moore, who recently moved from Detroit to Oak Park and attends Cass Tech High School, has passed out pamphlets about recycling in neighborhoods in Detroit, Southfield and Oak Park and at the Boys & Girls Club in Highland Park. She works at the club as a student aide.

Fittingly, her birthday is on Earth Day.

More is also working on other projects, such as an ongoing pop can tab drive to raise money for Ronald McDonald House. In 2010, she collected 320 winter hats and pairs of gloves for children in need. She’s one of the organizers of a blood drive later this month at the Boys & Girls Club.

“She’s a Detroit kid, born and raised in Detroit,” said Moore’s mother, Marilyn Madison. “People always think that all kids coming out of Detroit are bad. She’s done well. ... She makes the best of whatever situation she’s dealing with and has done a lot for the community.”

In the Action for Nature contest, Moore placed third in her age category. She won a certificate and $300.

“I used the money to buy more plastic bags to pick up the cigarette butts,” she said.